


Starving through the Leafless Wood

by vanilla_villain37 (van1lla_v1lla1n)



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Taryn/Locke, Book 2: The Wicked King, But only the smallest of divergences, Dom!Jude, F/M, Jealous!Cardan, Jealous!Jude, Light Dom/sub, Mentions of Violence, Switch!Cardan, Tail Fixation, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23412826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/van1lla_v1lla1n/pseuds/vanilla_villain37
Summary: After Taryn comes to her worried about Locke's being named Master of Revels, Jude arranges an evening meeting with Cardan to persuade him not to do it. But as she walks through the palace halls to his new rooms, she can't focus for the way her memory is dredging up vivid images and foul emotions she'd worked hard to quell. She'd thought she was done fixating on Cardan's cruel face, done remembering the way he'd looked laying disheveled in Locke's garden, done reliving that jealousy. She'd arranged this meeting for a reason, though; she won't let all that get in her way.aka "Jude Has Feelings and Definitely Lets All That Get in Her Way"
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 13
Kudos: 64





	Starving through the Leafless Wood

**Author's Note:**

> A deleted scene type of situation set mid-Wicked King. Title from the poem "Autumn Song" by W. H. Auden. (Sorry, not sorry, Auden.)
> 
> Edit: kaybohls made us this [gorgeous moodboard](https://twitter.com/kaybohls/status/1245212752211140610)! Go look at their pretty faces!! 🥰

On the walk through the palace hallways, Jude tries to think of her sister, tries to think of Locke’s petty cruelty, tries to think of ways to convince Cardan not to name Locke Master of Revels. But every third step Cardan’s smug, glittered face floats back into her head, smirking up at her from the ground in the garden, his arm wrapped around one fey woman, his mouth on another, his eyes locked on hers.

The scent of flowers, crushed grass. A lush mouth against his throat. His fingers grasping soft hair, the hair of someone immortal, beautiful forever, impervious to time and entropy and other bullshit. Her fists have tightened and she unclenches them as she reaches the door to Cardan’s new chambers, lets herself in when she hears him mumble something inside.

Cardan is beginning to sit up on his bed, his shirt loosened. Jude really had been surprised he had agreed to this meeting in the first place; didn’t he have something more _Cardan_ to be doing after-hours? Something involving dark wine and other gorgeous creatures who wouldn’t poison his kingly presence with trivial matters of ruling and the stench of mortality? Jude certainly had no remnant resentments stewing from the last of Cardan’s parties she’d walked into the aftermath of.

She says nothing to him, sits in the lush armchair across from the bed, leans forward to glare at him. She takes in a breath to launch into her arguments about Locke. But then she looks at Cardan’s mouth, his hands, the way his shirt drapes slightly open across his chest. And her own mouth gets away from her.

“I’m surprised you’re not having a different type of meeting right now, Cardan. I’m sure you’ve got some steam to blow off, plenty of folk to choose from, given your new status.” She feels prim, judgmental, and she’s sure she sounds it, but she can’t quite bring herself to care. Her jealousy stings and she wants it to sting him too.

“Indeed. It seems I’ve been tired, Jude. One of us has to do the public work of ruling and keeping the trust of _the folk_ while appearing to be controlled, very intimately, by a _human_.”

“And what if I commanded you to, Cardan?”

“Why are we meeting now, Jude?”

“What if I commanded you to arrange a tryst for yourself, held you to your vow to me?”

“Come on, Jude. You know you couldn’t do it.” Cardan stands up from the bed, moves toward the chair next to her, but stops in the middle of the room when Jude asks, “Couldn’t I?”

Cardan just stares her down, lifts his chin. “You couldn’t bear it.” And his smart mouth quirks.

Jude chooses not to honor that with a response. She stands up from the armchair and steps toward him.

“What else do you think I couldn’t do?” she asks. “Do you think I couldn’t bear to hurt you? Do you think I haven’t thought of killing you? Do you think I wouldn’t command you to stand on that very spot for the next five minutes and do exactly as I tell you to in that time?”

“You—”

“I command it. Five minutes, or until I release you, whichever is sooner. Stand, just there. And do exactly as I ask, when I ask it, in that time.”

Jude steps slowly beside Cardan, stares at the side of his face, his cheekbones, the line of his nose, then steps behind him, close enough she could press the tip of her vile mortal nose in his hair, if she chose.

Her mouth next to his ear, she asks, “Why do you hide your tail?”

“Looking for something else to hold against me?” It’s not a lie, not a direct disobedience.

Against his other ear, she says, “Let out your tail.”

And she steps around in front of him, her breast just brushing his arm, and backs up a bit to give him some space. She sees his tail flicking irritably behind him.

“Because it gives you away, is that it?” She leaves her mouth just slightly open for a moment, her lips curved up in a small smile, and watches him notice.

“Does it?” he asks. His tail twitches.

Jude holds out her hand. When his tail flicks again, she catches it, grasps it lightly near the end. She steps closer into him so that she can raise it to her face. Eyes the soft tuft at the end of it and brushes it against her mouth, as if it were a pen and she sitting thoughtful in a meeting. She lifts it again, brushes it slowly down the line of his nose, the center of his full mouth, her eyes following it. She sees his breath puff out against the fur of that little tuft, watches his jaw set when he sees that she’s noticed. When she lets go of his tail, it flicks lightly but almost violently back behind him. Jude smirks.

She leans in so close she can almost smell the sweetness of his fey skin. Watches his coal eyes widen, darken, flick between her own, catch on her mouth. And she steps back and lowers herself into her chair, her throne for these five minutes, her arms splayed out over the armrests, her legs stretched out in front of her. And she watches him standing there, caught up in his obligation to her.

“Tell me what you were thinking,” she says, and pauses, because she _feels_ he will take the bait, this time.

Cardan rolls his eyes. “When? Thinking when, exactly?”

“When I was with Locke, and we found you in that garden, having your sensuous little party. You looked up at me. Tell me why.”

Cardan rolls his eyes again, and Jude would feel inclined to slap him if he weren’t bound to her in this moment. A sneer mars his face, and a cruel smile. “I hated you, Jude. I _hate_ you. I wanted you to suffer as I did, watching you with Locke and wanting you to see him for what he was and _wanting you_ and _loathing_ all of it. Every last. Fucking. Second of it.”

Jude hears him and doesn’t hear him, glad her silence holds power now. She _knows_ Cardan can’t lie; she knows. And yet she feels somewhere deep in her chest that he is edging around her question, her command, in a way she will never be able to understand.

That place deep in her chest is thundering now. She considers how to command him, wonders if his shallow breaths are some visceral reaction to his inability to move away from her, out of the aura of her mortality, her temporal redolence.

She leans forward, crosses her legs, rests her elbow on her knee, her chin on her hand.

She wants to say, _Take off your shirt._ She wants to say, _Turn around; show me the scars on your back._ She wants to say, _Put your mouth on my ear_ , and ask, _Do you feel how_ ordinary _it is?_

She sees Cardan’s tail flick behind him, sees his lips part, sees his hand fidget at his side, itching to move. She wants to say, _Tell me what that tail flick meant._ She wants to say, _I hate you_. She wants to say, _Kiss me again; tell me how loathsome it is._

Jude stands up. She sees versions of herself stepping forward, whispering all these things against his mouth, his neck, her fingers tracing the skin exposed by his open shirt.

She says, “I release you from my previous command.” But still Cardan stays, just where she’d ordered him to, waiting and silent.

As she turns away her gaze trails over his chest, his unmade bed, the lush furnishings of his rooms. From the corner of her eye she sees his head tilt, his tail swish.

As she strides toward the door, she thinks, _I could never have changed his mind._ She says, “We’ll speak tomorrow.” And she pushes open his door, and leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on Twitter; I'm [@van1lla_v1lla1n](https://twitter.com/van1lla_v1lla1n)!
> 
> I made the moodboard I put in the fic but I'm garbage at HTML, so it shall remain uncentered 😂


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